Monday, January 22, 2018

The US-American Thought and Behaviour Control Project

Back in the day when Obama was running for president I thought that it was the genius of the US-American political system to convince jaded US-American voters that their political system wasn't a complete waste of time. After 8 years of Bill Clinton "triangulating" policy to capture right-wing "independent" voters, betraying the Democrats' progressive base over and over; and after 8 years of the bush II regime (two stolen elections) and the uselessness of Democratic opposition, ... along comes public relations construct Barack Obama; to take what is good and noble about so-called "identity politics" and use it to show the core emptiness of "identity politics."

"Look! A Black man is going to be President in a country founded on white supremacy and the enslavement of Blacks! How inspiring!"

And so he was elected twice. (It didn't hurt that his opponents were the aged, detestable John McCain and his loony-toons bimbo running-mate Sarah Palin the first time around; and then the hapless Mitt Romney and the loathsome Paul Ryan the second time.)

And upon election, Barack Obama launched into filling his cabinet with Wall Street criminals/carrying-out the bush II bailout of said criminals/protecting and coddling these criminals and enabling further criminal behaviour [foreclosing on homes they didn't own for one thing]/illegally using federal forces to work with local police forces to destroy the Occupy movement that sprang up to protest Wall Street criminality/doubling-down on the failed, murderous occupation of Afghanistan/pursuing the same old corporate rights "free trade" deals/escalating "death-from-the-sky" drone campaigns that have made innocents (including millions of children) from Yemen to Pakistan afraid of clear skies/continued the murderous occupation of Afghanistan/imposed a coup and a murderous brutal regime on the people of Honduras/supported racist fascist rebels in Venezuela/destroyed Libya (without Congressional authorization)/destroyed Syria/told Black people to get their collective act together ....

(You know, the sick thing about all of this is that Obama was probably about the best that the vile, insane, US-American system could barf-up. Hillary Clinton would have been worse as president as would ANY candidate from the Repugnicans. At least Obama cut a deal with Iran and forced health insurance companies to provide coverage to people with "pre-existing conditions.")

So Black people voted in large numbers to make sure Obama wasn't a one-term President (re: a "failure"). As did many working-class whites. And they got almost nothing for it. Whereas the corrupt, brutal oligarchy got serviced every single fucking day.

Nobody really wanted to vote for the vile Hillary Clinton. (Sure, people voted for her. More people than voted for Trump. But turnout for the 2016 election was close to 50%. Half the electorate doesn't see the point in voting. Why should they? They live in a goddamned oligarchy. That means it ISN'T a "democracy." Which means that the act of voting is a goddamned WASTE OF TIME.

But just when it seemed like the US political system was gasping for its last breaths, and everyone was ready to admit that it was all a sick, twisted, evil sham, the genius of the US-American experiment reveals itself again!!!

Here is Mr. Heroically Shining Out In The Dark With Love a year ago.
Y'know, back in the days when some action in the general directions of
not being a leader of the Don't Vote For Hillary Because K'rupt Duopoly
circle-jerk might have made a tangible difference ... So no, Mr. Dowd, you and your ilk are not heroes of our epic American poem. See you're the bad guys. Minor
ones, to be sure. Mere gutless punks and henchmen-for-hire in the
grand scheme of things, but definitely not on the side of the angels.

In the end, the stupid rantings of a shameless idiot like Driftglass aren't going to rouse the entire non-voting portion of the electorate to rally enthusiastically around whatever corporate Democrats are put on offer. But enough people will be mobilized by Trump hatred to make it a contest that the Democrats will likely win. And then the disappointment and betrayal and squalid corruption will begin all over again.

4 comments:

Perhaps if some semblance of free choice were to be put on the table instead of this eternally transfixed "default mode" societies operate by.As for me, I'll NEVER waste my time voting for anybody or anything. This world is a total farce, a gargantuan scam job.

You're right. It's "default mode" thinking. Re: "It just HAS to be the Democrats leading 'the resistance'! It just has tah!"

The BC NDP and the ONDP certainly seem to be making a vote for them to be futile. And the federal NDP leader Jagmeet Singh appears to think that Parliament is a waste of his time. He's so handsome and charismatic, that his engagement photos and his unnoticed traveling around the country talking about the power of love will do more than any sort of debating about legislation.

Yeah. Well a few Canadian media outlets talked about him in glowing terms when he was running for the leadership. And they liked him so much because he allowed them to talk about anything other than boring old politics. Instead they could talk about his looks, his supposed charisma, his suits, his exotic Sikh-ness.

About Me

I used to hang around on rabble.ca's "babble" until May, 2006, and, since then, I've been found at www.enmasse.ca and www.breadnroses.ca. Even more lately, I've been at EnMasse, but also numerous blogs from the progressive side.
I'm sometimes rude to people and I've been accused of "schoolyard taunts," so, here's my schoolyard.